A progressive voice from the Carolinas, featuring views, news, and dialogue that the corporate media doesn't. In the Mountains of Western North Carolina, Mills River is a rural community about 20 minutes from Asheville.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Pay Attention, Class!

The following is Jacob Appelbaum, who is sharing his views on privacy, government surveillance, and the current state of democracy with YASSSU at the Re:publica conference 2012 in Berlin.

As a commenter on Truthdig suggests, "research the videos and work
of Jacob Appelbaum and his challenge to the security state quietly being
erected around us. If unchallenged, it will produce at home what has been done in our name abroad."

Jacob has worked on the TOR project, which offers a platform for those who wish to protect their privacy online. Please stop thinking this: "I'm not a criminal, or a terrorist, I'm not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to hide", etc. I've thought that myself in the past.

But the point is, in a Police State, with an authoritarian government, what's considered "wrong" may simply be your opinions, your words, your associations, or your politics! What's "wrong" might change quickly depending on the whims of who is doing the looking. Don't forget, thanks to the NDAA, you - an AMERICAN CITIZEN - no longer have the right to a trial or to legal representation if *the authorities* deem you to be "a threat to Homeland Security". You could be scooped up and rot in a secret gulag somewhere (or worse), indefinitely.
The it-can't-happen-here crapola has already been blasted to smithereens. See, honey? You weren't just being paranoid!

And if you want to see just how secretive (and totally unaccountable) our government has become, be sure and catch this spot-on piece by Chris Hedges.

3 Comments:

An ex-Marine who does not have PTSD, but who does not agree with the official 9/11 conspiracy theory, has been arrested by the Secret Service and FBI and put in a psycho ward.

His lawyer said this: John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, said the following: “For government officials to not only arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights but to actually force him to undergo psychological evaluations and detain him against his will goes against every constitutional principle this country was founded upon. This should be a wake-up call to Americans that the police state is here.”

“In the councils of government we must guard against
the acquisition of power, whether sought or unsought,
by the military industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties and democratic processes.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower
from his final address to the nation
January 17, 1961

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
--Thomas Jefferson